Friday, March 14, 2014

Clubhouse

The door of an abandoned building a couple of blocks from my office. We are typical of mid-size, Midwestern towns: city centers much removed from their glory years; some historic buildings beautifully restored, some empty and derelict. This small building on Broadway falls in the latter category.

Lots of private clubs have sunk under the financial waves in this country. The local bar association used to have a very nice lawyers club, now long gone for lack of patronage. The advertising club may have left the downtown scene but, heaven help us, the ads live on in ever more intrusive and annoying ways. I blacklist and unsubscribe from the tsunami of marketing email but it's a futile effort. We are outraged that our cable TV provider, ATT U-Verse, now has a huge number of 24/7 advertising channels that we pay for. We are seriously thinking of going back to rabbit ears and over-the-air broadcasts. Three-quarters of the postal mail we get is advertising and goes straight in the trash without being opened.

What a waste. The marketing industry has worn out its welcome. We don't pay attention to a bit of it.

In a time when younger professionals have learned the benefits of networking, it seems ironic that the physical plant -- clubs -- that once hosted the best networking are being abandoned. I guess it is all virtual networking like social media now.